3

The Return of the Body

Phenomenology in Architecture

In Chapters 1 and 2 the problematic status of architecture as a discipline was presented as an argument between what the writer C. P. Snow referred to as the “two cultures”, of science and the arts.1 Snow, in his Rede Lecture of 1959, was describing what he saw as a deep division in modern society, between those involved in quantitative work – such as scientific research and engineering – and those engaged in more qualitative fields, such as literature, music and fine art. The problem for Snow was the lack of communication between these two groups who seemed suspicious of each other’s objectives, and in architecture, this situation has developed into an argument over the relevance of meaning. The two cultures within architecture embody a similar disagreement over the qualitative versus the quantitative approach to design. The historical material set out in the first two chapters of this book described the background to these two ways of thinking.

         In reality, of course, architecture is inevitably caught in the middle between the “autonomous” realm of free artistic expression and the “deterministic” activity of applied engineering. As the German philosopher Theodor Adorno made clear, in an essay entitled “Functionalism

1 C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1961.

Part 2

Models in Interpretation

Albert Hofstadter and Richard Kuhns, Philosophies of Art and Beauty: Selected Readings in Aesthetics From Plato to Heidegger, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1964.

Richard Kearney, “Jacques Derrida”, in Modern Movements in European Philosophy, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1986, pp 113-33.

Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice, Routledge, London, 1991.

Foreground

Jacques Derrida, “Point de Folie – maintenant de I’architecture”, translated by Kate Linker, in AA Files, No. 12/Summer 1986. Reprinted in Neil Leach (ed.), Rethinking Architecture, Routledge, London, 1997, pp 324-47.

Peter Eisenman, “Post-Functionalism”, in Oppositions, 6/Fall 1976.

         Reprinted in K. Michael Hays (ed.), Architecture Theory Since 1968, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998, pp 236-9.

John Rajchman, Constructions, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998.

Bernard Tschumi, “Abstract Mediation and Strategy”, in Architecture and Disjunction, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1994, pp 190-206.

Mark Wigley, “The Translation of Architecture: The Production of Babel”, in Assemblage, 8/1989. Reprinted in K. Michael Hays(ed.), Architecture Theory Since 1968, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998, pp 660-75.

Readings

Andrew Benjamin, “Eisenman and the Housing of Tradition”, in Architectural Design, 1-2/1989. Reprinted in Neil Leach (ed.), Rethinking Architecture, Routledge, London, 1997, pp 286-301.

Robert Mugerauer, “Derrida and Beyond”, in Kate Nesbitt (ed.), Theorising a New Agenda for Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1996.

         plurality of possibilities that can no longer be foreclosed by function, by teleology or the aesthetics of form.20

         This project is therefore a clear example of the notion touched on earlier, that architectural ideas exist at many different levels – in drawings, writings and models and not merely in completed buildings. The fact that some of these ideas have been obscured through the changes to the building during its life should not detract from the value of the project as a demonstration of architecture’s “critical” capacities.

         Rescuing the question of meaning from the reduction of architecture to engineering has been a preoccupation in architectural theory for at least the last several decades. It is this theme, which has only been touched on in this section, which will now become the central question in the remaining chapters. The following sections will map out the territory between the two positions discussed so far, which could be seen to mark the opposite poles of the argement over meaning and interpretation in architecture.

Suggestions for further reading

Background

Monroe Beardsley, Aesthetics: From Classical Greece to the Present, A short History, Macmillan, New York, 1966.

John D. Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida, Fordham University Press, New York, 1997.

Jacques Derrida, “The End of the Book and the Beginning Writing”, in Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri C. Spivak, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1976, pp 6-26

Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Relevance of the Beautiful” in The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays Robert Bernasconi(ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, pp 3-53.

20 Andrew Benjamin, “Eisenman and the Housing of Tradition”, in Neil Leach(ed.), Rethinking Architecture, Routledge, London, 1997, p 300.

Benjamin picks up on, in relation to deconstruction in philosophy. Rather than assume that this kind of criticism can only be carried out in conceptual terms, Eisenman’s building actually “enacts” this process, according to Benjamin, in the very medium it is attempting to criticize. This deliberate blurring of disciplinary categories between the theory and practice of a “critical” architecture is something that Derrida has also set out to demonstrate, between philosophy and the language of literature. As Benjamin writes, describing the context in which this kind of building should be understood:

         Eisenman’s work, the experience of that work, the philosophy demanded by it, opens up the need to think philosophically beyond the recuperative and nihilistic unfolding of tradition. Tradition is housed – since there is no pure beyond – but the housing of tradition takes place within a

24 Rem Koolhaas (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) – Kunsthal, Rotterdam, 1987-92.(Alistair Gardner)

25 Rem Koolhaas (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) – Kunsthal, Rotterdam, 1987-92. Interior showing columns in lecture hall.(Alistair Gardner)